pressed herb and flower pasta with garlic

isn’t this the most elegant sheet of pasta you’ve ever seen? all the additions (except parsley and garlic) came fresh from the garden--pansies, dill, basil and oregano in the dough, then rosemary in the sauce and chives as a garnish. i do have parsley growing that i could’ve used, but i had a nice fresh bunch from the store anyway.

to make this pasta, start out with a basic pasta dough. one slight alteration: while making the dough i minced two cloves of garlic...kept mincing and crushing and mincing until it became a fine paste, then added it at the same time as the olive oil. garlic is optional but recommended.

i rolled out the dough pretty thin--ending on the second- or third-to-last setting on the machine--then cut it into pairs of equal-sized rectangles and laid out the herbs. i rinsed the herbs just prior to setting them down and the moisture helped adhere them to the dough.

i also spritzed the top dough rectangle with a little water before carefully layering it on top of the herbs. i gently rolled it with a rolling pin to seal, then ran it through the pasta machine until it became thin and transparent.

this was my second attempt; my first attempt didn’t turn out how i wanted. i didn’t make the dough very thin before placing the herbs, so when i rolled it out enough for the proper effect the herbs became extremely stretched out:

which is not a bad look, but not what i wanted. keep in mind that the herbs are going to stretch a bit no matter what. if you use a rolling pin instead of a pasta machine you can stretch them in all directions instead of just one.

i also placed the leaves too far apart the first time. with the second sheet i gave a lot more thought to layout. i tried to make the dill look like plants the flowers are growing from--afterwards i realized i could’ve used saffron threads at the base to look like roots. there’s so much creative potential with this technique--i love the idea of using it to make pictures or abstract patterns.

i sliced the finished pasta in thick ribbons. here it is cooked:

for seasoning i heated a bit of olive oil and added a couple coarsely-chopped garlic cloves, some rosemary and salt. as you can see i overcooked the garlic a little...it didn’t burn at least, and it was still delicious. then i scattered fresh chives around the plate and added a sprig of oregano for garnish.